Recording: BLACK GALAXIE

Artist: BLACK GALAXIE

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #109), October 7, 2025.

BLACK GALAXIE - [excerpt]

Last spotted in the recital hall with an eight-channel diffusion system, this set saw Nolan Hildebrand bringing the noise with a table full of gear including mixer, laptop, snare drum, synth, pedals, and a mouth-deployed contact mic wrapped in a plastic bag. Garbled speech samples and fragmented X Files regranulations crept in around the noisebursts, all while Hildebrand looked to be having a blast while enjoying the squall.

You can check out some more from this set over on youtube:

Recording: Nolan Hildebrand

Artist: Nolan Hildebrand

Song: portals II

Recorded at University of Toronto – Walter Hall (Nolan Hildebrand’s DMA Recital), March 11, 2015.

Nolan Hildebrand - portals II

You know it's not business as usual when you arrive for a DMA recital at the music school and greet your candidate as he's setting out a big jar of earplugs for the audience. Coordinating the proceedings in a Meshuggah t-shirt, Nolan Hildebrand's afternoon of music presumably had the requisite rigour required by his professors, but kept things wrapped in noise show aesthetics.

With an eight-channel speaker array set up around the auditorium, many of the pieces used spacialization effects quite nicely, moving from the interstitial audio collages to the performaces on stage. There was an inneresting variety to those as well, ranging from Hildebrand's own solo improvisations for modular synth (with some cool sound-triggered visualizations) to pieces for violin and MAX patch, to a percussion ensemble, to the all-star group (Colin Fisher, Patrick O'Reilly, Louis Pino) joining Hildebrand on this piece.